Christian Science -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction
"I freely confess to you that I wish to purchase Guildford in order to
let Carolina go down there and work her will with the place. The girl
has courage, good business ideas; she is a friend of my daughter’s, and
I am interested in the development of her character. I would just as
soon leave you to make the same arrangement with her which I propose to
make, if she would consent to have money transactions with you, but she
will not. For what reason you and she probably know. I confess that I
do not, but what you have just been good enough to tell me concerning
your feelings toward her would seem to throw light upon the situation.
Now, may I make a suggestion?"
"A thousand, if you will!"
"Thank you. Now, possibly an outsider may be able to give you a new
point of view. Suppose you yield to Carolina’s wishes, sell me the
place, and thus give her the opportunity to carry out her dead father’s
plans. You thus provide her with a cherished life-work. You know the
Lees. They are proud and grateful. To whom would her heart naturally
turn? To an old married man like me, through her friendship for my
daughter, or to a comparatively young man like yourself, in whose
children she is as vitally interested as she must have been to heal your
baby girl?"
Now Mr. Howard was deliberately playing upon the man’s feelings, but he
was not prepared for the change in Colonel Yancey’s face.
"Did she do that?" he said, in a hoarse voice, "Did she do it?"
"Certainly she did. Who else?"
"They told me that Mrs. Goddard did it--Sister Sue told me."
"No, it is considered by the Christian Scientists--this new sect which
you may have heard that Carolina has joined--that Gladys is her first
case of healing. Carolina is Mrs. Goddard’s pupil, and doubtless Mrs.
Goddard helped her,--in the curious way they have, for I overheard
Carolina telephoning Mrs. Goddard to treat her--Carolina--for fear, in
your little daughter’s case. I believe they heal by confidence in God’s
promises and the theory that mind controls matter. Wonderful, isn’t
it?"
"Wonderful, indeed, but the most wonderful part of it to me is that
Miss Carolina was induced to render me this inestimable benefit when
she--well, she used to hate me, to be quite frank. If you knew the
rebuffs I have taken at her hands!"
"Well, that is one of the results of this new religion of hers. It is
founded on love, and they are obliged to live it, or they fail to
receive any benefits. It is a self-acting religion, and is its own
detective. They regard hatred, for example, as a disease, and naturally
Carolina could not, in their code, be healed herself or heal others as
long as she hated you. Thus, in healing your little girl, she was
working out her own salvation."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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